Is Mark Kingwell Getting Dumber?

University of Toronto philosophy professor Mark Kingwell was sitting in his office last week. It was the end of term, graduation time at post-secondary institutions across the country and he was thinking about how perople at this time of year are always asking him, “Are the kids getting dumber? Can they even write?” The media-ubiquitous philosopher suddenly had an inspiration for a clever op-ed squib that he could dash off and post to the Globe and Mail’s opinion pages. Kingwell’s thinking... 
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Letter from Berlin: Hope Springs… Momentarily

Berlin — I suppose we’ll get used to it after awhile: an American president goes to Europe and does just about everything right. Thoughtful policy presentation, absence of imperial bullying, and a sure-handed human touch. President Barack Obama’s first official European trip, which began at a mid-week G-20 conference in London, followed by stops in Strasbourg and Baden-Baden, wrapped up on Sunday in Prague, with a policy speech in flower-bedecked Castle Square before thousands of people,... 
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Not for Everyone

*** My favourite right-wing columnist, the Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente, confidently informs me that university is not for everyone because "a lot of kids just aren't smart enough" ("Who needs university anyway?", May 23, 2008). I should report that this bit of belated, but vital intelligence was conveyed to me thanks to the failure of the Globe's online pay-for-view plan. Like other major newspapers, the Globe has now abandoned its online subscription program (the New... 
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Letter from Berlin: Fahrenheit 451 Revisited

*** BERLIN–Some things I take personally. This is one of them. That’s because I write books. So, whenever people burn books–whether it’s the ancient library of Alexandria, Egypt going up in flames nearly two millennia in the past, or the 2003 torching of the National Library in Baghdad just five years ago, at the beginning of the U.S. invasion of Iraq–I take offense. And it’s personal. When the temperature reaches Fahrenheit 451, the degree at which paper burns, books like... 
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Letter from Berlin: “We are now beginning our descent”

  *** When the nice Lufthansa captain, piloting an airbus or a 7-something-7 somewhere in the heavens above Berlin, announces in a mild German accent that we’re beginning our approach for a landing, the only question these days is, We’re descending, but into which airport? Last week, some of Berlin’s 2.4 million eligible voters cast their ballots in the city’s first referendum in recent history over the question of the region’s airports. This probably isn’t the sort of story that will... 
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No Saviours Needed, Just Some “Good News”

***   Leave aside the factoid that the cover of this week’s Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading newsweekly, features an inspirational photo of U.S. Senator Barack Obama and the headline: “The Messiah Factor.” Fact is, the reason that progressives in Canada, Europe and sizeable chunks of the rest of the world care about the outcome of the still-months-away American presidential election of November 2008 is not because they’re looking for saviours. Rather, they’re simply looking for (to stick... 
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Good News: The End is Nigh

*** I watched the CNN/YouTube Democratic Party presidential candidates debate the other week, and then I followed some of the post-debate coverage of the event, and I even tried to read a Rex Murphy column about it in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Having invoked the Canadian national icon, O' Murphy of Newfoundland, complete with his winning authentic accent, I have to admit, as a big fat aside, that I've never been able to read a Rex Murphy column or listen to a Rex Murphy TV commentary all the... 
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Heartless in Gaza

* * * A leftist friend phoned me one evening last week. "Is the world going to end?" she wanted to know. Fortunately, it's possible to know what's on the mind of your friends without having to ask for all the details. Like me, she'd seen the Internet reports and pictures of the Hamas and Fatah factions in Gaza shooting it out. What she wanted to know was, Would the Palestinian civil war and deadly split between Hamas in Gaza, and Fatah in the West Bank likely lead to a regional... 
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Letter from Europe: Ooh-la-la Land

  ***   BERLIN—No, that big whooshing sound you may have heard a couple of weeks ago coming from the direction of France was not the collapse of a giant souffle. Rather, it was a collective national sigh of relief released by the record turn-out (some 85 per cent) of French voters after the April 22, 2007 first round of the French presidential election. The French electorate sighed with relief because it managed to avoid the embarrassing debacle that occurred five years ago in the last... 
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Letter from Europe: Bomb Scare

*** BERLIN—As a child of the Nuclear Age, I arrive replete with memories of crawling under our wooden school desks during futile A-Bomb fire drills, and flipping through the pages of Popular Mechanics magazine to gaze at do-it-yourself blueprints for equally futile A-Bomb shelters. I was “just a gleam” in my father’s eye—that’s a phrase he liked to use while recounting the legend of my impending birth in Chicago—when the scientists in a lab under Alonzo Stagg Field at the University of... 
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